Existing sewable light emitting diodes (LEDs), i.e., LEDs that can be sewn or otherwise affixed to fabric/garments, generally use either basic raw diode LEDs that must be hand-matrixed, or use ‘smart’ LEDs that have a chip on them but share a single bus.
Raw LEDs are often a single color only (not full RGB spectrum) and in order to connect and control any reasonable number of LEDs, they must be multiplexed. For example, commonly there are 8×8 grids of 64 LEDs that can be controlled with a 16 pin controller (rather than 64 pins). Furthermore, when integrating such a circuit design into a fabric, conductive thread is often used for wiring the LEDs and the controller. However, the problem is that the LEDs and the threading or traces that connect them cannot be ‘planar’ (FIG. 1), and thus it is nearly impossible to make the LEDs and conductive thread all lay on a single fabric without overlapping problems. Also, the LEDs must be hand stitched one at a time, and it can be difficult to add more LEDs to the circuit.
Smart LEDs have also been implemented using a shared bus. In doing so, each LED pixel must have a unique identifier/address, which makes repair for large-scale clothing in the field (where a replacement LED cannot be easily assigned the unique identifier of a broken LED) essentially impossible (FIG. 2).
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the disclosure made herein is presented.